Posts Tagged: Fishing for compliments

I went to the bank this afternoon. The good-looking young security guy on the door stared at me when I went through the exit door. I wondered if he was going to check my bag. I said, “Have I done something wrong?”. He said, “No, you look really pretty. I wanted to know if you’re taken. Would you go out with me?”. I nearly dropped dead. Nothing like that has happened to me for about 90 years. I burst out laughing and said, “Sweetheart I’ve got two children and I’m really old.” But he made my day!

If this lady had been interested in staying ageless, this was one big missed opportunity. Instead she rejected youth in favour of a more elderly self. By aligning herself with older people the young guard would not have found attractive (she even mentions the number 90), by using condescending vocabulary (“Sweetheart”) in the way her mother may have done before, by stating she was ‘really old’ when she was only 50, she was instructing her body to appear that way in future, even though that morning it did not. How did she react to compliments from young men when she was 30? This is how she should also have reacted now.

We are more powerful than we know. If we are interested in staying ageless, we never mention our age. We never state, “I’m really old”. Not even, “I’m too old for you”. For every such statement sends us down a rung on the ladder of decline.
Every age has a vibration. Ages where we are potentially in transition – often the start of a new decade – are danger zones for vibratory shift. When we reach 40, 50, 60 our subconscious sends a powerful message to our bodies. Belief is the foundation of all realities – see examples of physical changes in people with multiple personalities and the blog post The Vibe of Youth). Subtly, slowly, we transform into the societal archetype of our new age, morphing into the picture of those we have known who have reached that age before us.
If 50, 60 or 70 had no social meaning it would be safe to state our age. But we have all been conditioned to expect certain behaviours and appearances from humans according to how long they have been around. Even for those who look young for their age, stating it becomes a game, one of fishing for compliments. Take the following scenario:“How old are you?” “Guess.” “I don’t know. 45?” (which probably means the person looks 50) “I’m 60 years old!” “Wow, you look amazing.”
This does us no good at all. Looking young considering how old we are is still sending the same message to our cells and tissues : we are 60 – with all that implies – even though we may not currently comply with how the majority of 60 year olds look.
For those who wish to remain ageless, if anyone does ask us such a direct question we can say :“Oh dear…memory fails me, ask me another one.” “I was born in the 20th century, that much I know.” “I’m 26.” “Sorry, classified information.” “In Martian years I’m coming up to 24.”
Curious individuals may use more subtle tricks to make us state our administrative age. For instance :
“Oh your eldest son is 22?” and later, “So how old were you when you had your first child?”“How many years’ experience do you have in this area?” and later, “How old were you when you got the job?”“Of course the people who arrived in the eighties had a tough job” (use of flattery)…and later, “You must be over 55, right?”“So how many years do you have left until retirement?”
It is not easy to find an evasive answer without sounding rude, but “I can’t remember,” and a quick change of subject is better than falling into the trap and later thinking, “It’s no good. I can’t escape it. I’m on the way out.”

If we want the collective consciousness to harmonise with our chosen age, we do not want our “administrative” age to be “out there”. We never say “guess my age”, we never want to look “good for our age”, we never align ourselves with our age cohort, ever, unless we actually are the ‘social age’ that we wish to appear. A 26 year old who looks 26 could state her age, though it would be good to get out of the habit from the beginning. A 52 year old who looks 15 years younger should never do so, not even to him or herself, if intent on staying ageless. This is an area where a foggy memory is a good thing.
There are of course circumstances where it is impossible to conceal the number of earth years we have been around, such as in dealings with authority. In the film “The Age of Adaline”, when a police officer is startled by the age on Adaline’s ID, her instinct is to flee to another city. Such drastic measures are unnecessary. If we know we are about to have to reveal our age and yet we appear much younger, we can make an effort to veil our appearance in order to avoid the “shock” reaction in the person opposite us, which could jump our body into the parallel world where we aged like everyone else (“She said I couldn’t possibly be 65, that there must be a mistake. My appearance is therefore a mistake….”). Sometimes we can even put our adopted age rather than our administrative age on a form – the gym doesn’t need to know how old we are, nor do the supermarket loyalty card people. But this is not always possible if we want to avoid being charged with fraud. In order to avoid the startled reaction by a person who has our administrative age on file, a gorilla suit – or perhaps wearing large spectacles, ageing head-wear, severe hair styles and unflattering clothes for the few minutes of the interview – are temporary ways of avoiding having to justify our appearance! Experienced reality surfers can choose to temporarily appear older by consciously aligning themselves with their administrative age for a few moments, but this is only advisable for those no longer subject to the hypnotic power of this world of illusions – and how many of those people are there around!? But even if we have to strip naked for a new medic (medics who have known us for years usually fail to notice we aren’t changing due to change blindness), we can rest assured that we will soon be forgotten as the doctor moves onto other patients and to his/her own worries and cares. We slip away at the end of the appointment, not to be seen again until the next scheduled routine scan…perhaps in two years. Some choose never to see a doctor at all.
A situation where change blindness can fail is when we meet someone from our past who has not seen us in many years. If they are aware of how they themselves have changed they may well express genuine surprise. If they are from our own age cohort – for example an old school friend – this is dangerous territory. They don’t have to ask our age since they know already, and their energy and memories could affect our vibration, since we are ‘entangled’ with them from the past. Humour and moving swiftly on is a way out. For example :“Maureen, you haven’t changed a bit. No, really. My God. You’re exactly the same. It’s incredible.” “Must be the lighting in this bar; hey you’ll never guess who I heard from the other day.”
Or“Maureen, you still look like a young girl. I don’t believe it.” “And you Betty – I’d have recognised you anywhere! Hey the risotto looks good, I’m having that. Now do I have a story for you. Remember that guy I nearly married?”

Many who apply the rule of never stating their age are mocked for their vanity. No matter, since it is not for vanity that we are refusing the age society wishes to pin on us. Instead we are aligning ourselves with our ideal age, soaking our bodies in the vibration of youth, affirming that growing younger is as natural as growing older, believing that regeneration is easier than degeneration, transcending the ageing process with the mind, which is the sole source of reality.
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After 50 it is almost certain that at some time we will be told how good we look ‘for our age’. It is the age at which dubious offers start arriving in the post, such as off-season cruises and fashion catalogues featuring blouses with flounces and stretch pants, and even pre-paid funeral plans to give family members “peace of mind.” If we still have children of school age and could not even dream of taking an off-peak holiday, we are made to feel odd and out of kilter with the norm. If someone says we look good for our age at this point, we may be tempted to boast how old we actually are. Big mistake.Affirming we look good considering our age is stamping our ‘social’ age on our subconscious. It is signing up to the world’s obsession with the passing of time, and aligning ourselves with society’s cues about how one should look, and behave, at a given age. It is being ageist, but towards ourselves. Sometimes when stating our age we leave a silence in the hope someone will say, “Wow, I’d never have guessed.” If the silence persists we feel cheated. Maybe I look even older than I really am, we might think.
Some people want to have it both ways. They want to look good but they also want what they see as the perks of being older. Some of these include being given the comfy chair, being told to take it easy with those bags or delegating household jobs to younger people. But if we want to stay ageless there are no half measures. Staying young means acting exactly as we would have when we were under 40. “I’ve got a bad back,” said the 65 year-old woman in the seniors’ group at the gym. “The coach said I should take it easy.” “Oh, what happened?” asked her friend. “I slept with the door open and my back caught a chill. That’s what happens when you reach old age.”
Well, at least it will have given her doctor a laugh.When we start receiving these qualified compliments it is time to take a decision about how we will deal with them. If we want to buck the trend, we need to assume the persona of a young person fully. Staying ageless means giving up being able to intimidate rude people because of our age. It means foregoing pulling rank, and sometimes remaining silent when tempted to brag about experience. It sometimes means being elusive about how long you have been doing a job, or how vivid your memories are of Marc Bolan singing MetalGuru on Top of the Pops. Staying ageless means tricking one’s own subconscious and the collective unconscious by aligning ourselves with a younger us. “You mean buy one of the flats, not the whole block, love,” laughed the estate agent. The buyer’s chronological age? 52. The estate agent had assumed from her young voice on the phone she was much younger. She did not correct her, but sent an offer for the whole block two days later. Way to go.
Saying ‘back in my day’, ‘when I was your age’, or ‘30 years ago when I was incollege’ may get you a raised eyebrow and lots of flattery, but at the expense of your subconscious mind which controls your physiology.Is it so bad to give up compliments about how good we look for our age? After all there is always the possibility people are lying, which is even worse. Haven’t we all been confronted with someone who announces proudly, “Well, I’m 72!” and we reply on cue, “I’d never have guessed”, while secretly thinking how haggard they look and how we hope we never get to look like them?
If we really act as though we are young, we forego all those compliments about how good we look for our age, since people will assume we are much younger. If we want to turn back the clock, we dodge and duck age mania, we circumvent the relentless descent, and to achieve this we give up receiving praise for how well we have looked after ourselves “considering”. If we fish for compliments that we look good for our age, we are adopting that age. Internalising the comment You look good for 60 if we look and feel nothing like the accepted stereotype of 60 is as absurd as other conditional compliments such as “You look good for a bank employee”, or “You’re well-preserved for someone from Slough.” If we were to receive such a bizarre compliment we would feel an immediate clash with who we really are. Good for someone from Slough? But I’m not from Slough! Precisely, so nor am I 60, at least not what society believes 60 is.We never fish for compliments, and if at all possible we keep silent about our chronological age, and simply carry on as normal.